An accurate diagnosis is necessary for patients who need to undergo medical treatment. Before a physician can decide the best type of treatment to order or refer a patient to a specialist who works with particular systems or medical conditions, a physician first has to understand what caused the patient’s symptoms.
Doctors ask patients specific questions. They can collect samples of blood or tissue for testing. They can order imaging tests. The diagnostic process is different in each case depending on the symptoms presented by the patient and other factors.
Patients often take for granted that the doctor treating them can quickly and accurately reach a diagnostic conclusion. Unfortunately, diagnostic errors are somewhat common. There are two main types of diagnostic errors, both of which can have major consequences for a patient.
Failure to diagnose
Frequently, doctors may only have limited information about the situation when they talk to a patient and review their chart. In some cases, they may ignore it or dismiss the symptoms reported by the patient. Doctors might send a patient away without a diagnosis when their symptoms seem to be sporadic or unconnected to one another. In some cases, doctors may fail to diagnose patients because they assume that they have misrepresented the situation, possibly in an attempt to seek certain medication. The failure to diagnose a patient can result in their condition worsening until they finally receive a diagnosis.
Misdiagnosis
Doctors have to learn extensively about a variety of different medical issues. This obligation exists in part because many different medical conditions may share the same symptoms. A doctor could misdiagnose a patient as having a respiratory infection when they actually have cancer. Misdiagnosis, like a failure to diagnose, is dangerous in part because a patient doesn’t receive appropriate interventions for the condition they have. They may also be at risk of a poor outcome because they undergo treatment for a condition they do not have.
Both a failure to diagnose and misdiagnosis are often signs of mistakes, oversights or negligence on the part of the healthcare professional. Particularly when the medical records of the patient include adequate information for other professionals to diagnose that individual, the doctor who diagnosed them improperly or failed to diagnose them may have committed medical malpractice.
Filing a medical malpractice lawsuit can potentially help people cover increased medical expenses, lost wages and other economic losses related to a diagnostic error. A successful lawsuit can also influence the future practices of the doctor or medical facility involved in the situation.